CSU Rams

CSU Athletics; Under construction

University athletic upgrades reach beyond football

Colorado State is currently doing work on the Jack Christiansen Track, a $2.5 million project that will provide a major facility upgrade for the program. (Mike Brohard/ Loveland Reporter-Herald)

CSU: Under construction

CSU athletic director Joe Parker is constantly looking at upgrades for the teams in his departments, with a number of projects currently under construction or consideration.

Jack Christiansen Track — The $2.5 million project is currently underway, which CSU hoped to have done this spring, but weather did not cooperate. When completed, the university will have a top-notch facility capable of holding large events.

Golf simulator — The university had one donated for the men's and women's programs, and approval is in place to transform a racquetball court into an indoor golf facility for the Rams.

McGraw office space — With the football staff moving into the stadium, space was opened to move around departments, creating what Parker considers a better environment for coaching staffs and the communications, marketing and developing departments to work closer together. Football meeting rooms on the first floor can now become video study rooms for other sports.

Moby locker rooms — The Joey Porter Locker Room the football team used will find a new use, with Parker considering a hospitality space for in-venue entertainment, plus another idea he's not ready to make public. There are concepts being developed to restructure locker rooms, one plan taking the old football weight room and surrounding space and creating new men's and women's basketball facilities, allowing other teams to move into bigger spaces and even have spaces they never had in the area.

Softball/soccer complex — The soccer team took over the football practice facilities, and to the east sits the softball field. In between is remnants of the former baseball field, which isn't aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Parker's idea is to combine the two facilities through a common-use area that would serve both programs and their fans alike

FORT COLLINS — The project is complete.

Colorado State athletic director Joe Parker would like to connect the soccer and softball facilities with a shared-use building complete with amenities for fans, while eliminating structures left behind from the old baseball field. (Mike Brohard / Loveland Reporter-Herald)

Despite some loud criticism from a small group, Colorado State moved forward and completed the $220 million on-campus stadium, and the facility proved to be everything the university had hoped.

In bringing fans to the venue — a record 192,369 for the 2017 football season — CSU was able to return people back to campus. When alumni arrived, many who hadn't spent a lot of time on the grounds in a while, they noticed the stadium wasn't the only piece that was new or renovated.

With all the foot traffic, the university was able to hit all the financial markers it needed to for the stadium, but as athletic director Joe Parker noted, "we had one successful year, and as they say, that's one lap of 40. There's 39 more in our future we have to hit the mark on."

More than that, really. Because there are more tracks to run — one literally, others figuratively — as Parker's vision for the athletic department starts to unfold. The ambition will be dialed down, but the importance is no less grand, smaller projects that are being undertaken now, or are in the planning phase as every Ram athlete's needs are being considered to reach the level both Parker and CSU president Tony Frank target.

Remember, in Frank's thinking, all aspects of the campus must rise for the whole to succeed, and the grounds on which CSU sits are rising. In the past decade, the university has put $1.5 billion into new construction or renovations ranging from academics, housing to athletics. CSU golfer Jake Staiano, an NCAA regional qualifier last year, could tee up a ball anywhere on campus and be in range for one of his drives to nail one of those projects.

"Another piece of focus is on facilities," Parker said. "We finished the $220 million project over there, but we have 15 other programs that always need us to look in and understand what's necessary to create the most competitive environment possible and put ourselves at an advantage."

Before the football team hosted its first official game at the stadium, construction had already started on the renovation of Jack Christiansen Track, a $2.5 million project funded by the athletic department.

First built in 1988, CSU senior associate athletic director for facilities operations Doug Max (the school's former track coach) said the track had lived a full life. When it came time to update it, the plan wasn't to simply replace the surface.

"We went out and designed, really, a world-class type track. This will be an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) certified track," Max said. "We've done some things that will make it last a long time."

They scraped out the old track to the core. In its place is a post-tension concrete base that will give the facility a life of 50 years, 30 more than the old asphalt base. CSU is using a high-quality urethane for the track, one which will serve for 15 years before needing a facelift, and when that time comes, it allows for new urethane to be poured on top, not dug out and redone.

The lanes have been widened to 48 inches from 42, and the track design allows for sprints and the short hurdle events to be run on either side and in either direction to account for wind. There are dual throwing areas for the shot put, discus and hammer throw, with safety aspects built into the design as the javelin area runs down the center. Men's and women's pole vault events can be run simultaneously in different directions, and there are two jumping pits.

In short, Max joked, the facility could run up to seven events simultaneously if they wanted to go nuts. Before, track coach Brian Bedard said they weren't even taking recruits out there.

Coaches on campus know football is the driving force, and they understand why. But a project like this tells a highly successful coach like Bedard they are not being forgotten.

Bedard said they rolled the dice to get it done for this season, but the weather held it back. While it will affect his team's training for this season, he knows the payoff at the end will be appreciated.

"We know what the drivers are, and we know what ticket sales does. I get that," Bedard said. "I've also been in athletics long enough to know Olympic sports can get neglected. I see every effort from the administration to try to move all the programs forward. Joe Parker is a really good listener, and when he asks, 'how to do we get better?' he listens.

"We're trying to attack the needs of everybody. Not everything can be done at one time, and things need to be prioritized, but I think everybody is being listened to and efforts are being made to move every program forward."

When the football staff moved out of the McGraw Athletic Center, office space was opened up. Parker and his staff drew up plans to have departments shuffled around, creating a better working environment for the coaching and communication staffs, as well as the marketing departments, that need to work closely together.

Football meeting rooms on the first floor are going to be used as video rooms for other teams, and as they work their way toward Moby Arena, more plans come into view.

Namely the locker space. The Joey Porter Locker Room now sits unused, and Parker has ideas for its use. The old football weight room, well, Parker has a vision for that and some surrounding space to be converted into new men's and women's basketball locker rooms, allowing other teams to move to bigger spaces while others, like golf, gain some space they've never had.

"I think that's probably a good focus for our development team to create the resources to make that happen," Parker said. "It's a reiteration of a plan, share more with hoops to let them nuance. Once we have that, we'll do some price estimates and cost on construction and have a rough blueprint.

"Then that kind of triggers a little bit of trickle down across other programs."

Yes, the financial component. Parker said the fundraising department is always at work with new projects in mind, even those which haven't been thought of yet. Depending on the financial report you look at, be it the one issued to the NCAA or the one dictated to the board of governors, you can get a different interpretation of how a university is doing. CSU deputy director of athletics Steve Cottingham, the chief financial officer, said "it's probably more fair to say we run a balanced budget. We're outdoing our projections and balancing our budget." Much of the outpacing stems from the new agreements with Learfield Sports and Under Armour, but don't take into account the first season of the new stadium.

For the athletic department, fundraising has been on the rise. It naturally hit a peak with a big-ticket item like the stadium, but the university is encouraged it has the necessary backing, because there's always something to improve.

"Let's be really honest. We had some extraordinary success related to fundraising, and we had an extraordinary need that we were trying to meet," Parker said. "I think fundraising runs in direct parallel to what your strong articulated needs are. We've probably completed a project that in our lifetime will be the most ambitious project ever untaken by the university for athletes.

"The blocking and tackling never stops. We need scholarship support, we need the facilities completed that our next priorities are getting cued up."

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